Livni: Rising star of Israel's troubled political establishment

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who on Thursday challenged the Kadima party leadership of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, under investigation for alleged corruption, is seen as as rising political star and a contender to be its second woman leader.The 49-year-old lawyer, who defied her staunch nationalist background to become the number two in government and in the centrist Kadima, is today the most popular member of government.She is seen as the strongest candidate to succeed Olmert as Kadima's head and enjoys high public approval ratings, though she still trails right-wing Likud party chief Benjamin Netanyahu in polls as a potential premier.Today Livni heads the peace negotiations with the Palestinians, launched late last year in a US conference, but which have since made little visible progress.She has met frequently with her US counterpart, Condoleezza Rice, on improving conditions for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, where she is committed to the creation of a Palestinian state but also ensuring Israel's security and fight against terror."The creation of a Palestinian state, of a Palestinian economy, is clearly in Israel's interests, and we share the Palestinians' desire, just as cracking down on terror is a Palestinian interest," Livni said, while attending a donors conference for the Palestinians in Paris in December.In April she took the rarely available opportunity of visiting an Arab country, attending a democracy forum in Qatar, where she lobbied for support against Iran's nuclear drive and urged Arab states to forge ties with Israel.Ironically, Livni was virtually born to be a luminary in Likud.Her Polish-born father Eitan was director of operations for the Irgun, the hardline nationalist group that fought British rule through World War II and was one of the main factions that later formed the Likud.Yet she was among the first ministers to join former premier Ariel Sharon in breaking with Likud before the March 2006 elections, becoming one of the new party's founders.With her mother Sarah also an Irgun militant, Tzipi was brought up steeped in the vision of a Greater Israel that would include what are now the Palestinian territories.But under Sharon's tutelage she swung round to his conviction that the only way to preserve Israel as a Jewish state was to relinquish at least some of the land occupied in the 1967 Six-Day War.Livni was born in Tel Aviv on July 8, 1958. She received a law degree from Bar-Ilan University, and practiced law in a private firm for 10 years before entering public life. She specialised in commercial, constitutional and real estate law.An MP since 1999, she was appointed to the cabinet in March 2001, becoming minister of regional cooperation. She has since also held the agriculture, immigration and justice portfolios.Before following her father into politics, she worked in a commercial law partnership after four years in the legal section of the Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence service.She is married and has two children.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080529181705.e7m502xh&show_article=1

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